I knew by then as a Jewish kid that there were people who hated me simply for that reason. -Norman Lear
Norman Lear, 1922-2023.
From IMDB:
Norman Lear was born in 1922 in New Haven, Connecticut, He flew 52 combat missions over Europe in World War II before beginning his television career. His classic shows of the 1970s and ’80s – All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, among others – collectively reached as many as 120 million viewers per week and are said to have transformed the American cultural landscape, bringing the social and political issues of the day into American living rooms for the first time. With the rise of the radical religious right, Lear put his career on hold in 1980 to found People For the American Way, the nonprofit organization that remains a relevant and effective force defending all aspects of the First Amendment.
Lear was among the first seven television pioneers inducted in 1984 into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. In 1999, President Clinton presented him with the National Medal of Arts, noting that “Norman Lear has held up a mirror to American society and changed the way we look at it.”
